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Arthur Hugh Clough

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Arthur hugh clough 1

Arthur Hugh Clough circa 1860, from The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough, 1903. Courtesy Poets' Corner.

Arthur Hugh Clough (1 January 1819 - 13 November 1861) was an English poet, an educationalist, and a devoted supporter of ground-breaking nurse Florence Nightingale.

Life[]

Overview[]

Clough, son of a cotton merchant in Liverpool,spent his childhood in America, but was sent back to England for his education, which he received at Rugby and Oxford. While at the university, where he became tutor and Fellow of Oriel, he fell under the influence of Newman, but afterwards became a sceptic and resigned his Fellowship in 1848. In the same year he published his poem, The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, written in hexameters. In 1848 he traveled in France, and in 1849 he went to Italy, where he wrote much of Amours de Voyage, a verse novel, set in Rome during the shortlived Roman Republic, also beginning a second long poem, Dipsychus, set in Venice. The same year he was appointed Principal of University Hall, London, later also being appointed Professor of English Literature at University College. He resigned these posts in 1852, on his engagement to Blanche Smith, and briefly tried to establish a new career in America, in Cambridge and Boston, in Massachussetts. In 1854 he returned to England, was appointed an examiner in the Education Office, and married Blanche. At the Education Office, he also served as secretary of a Commission on Military Schools, in connection with which he visited various countries. After a period of illness, he took sick leave traveling on the Continent for his health, but in late 1861, in Florence, he fell more seriously ill, and died. Clough was a man of singularly sincere character, with a passion for truth. His poems have always been valued for their thought, but with the exception of some famous short lyrics, sometimes criticized as deficient in form; most recent critics praise hisa poetry for its ironic voice and subtle metrical effects. On the hexameters he used in The Bothie and Amourts de Voyages, even older critics think "perhaps used as effectively as by any English verse-writer." Matthew Arnold's "Thyrsis" was written in memory of Clough.[1]

Family, youth, education[]

Richard Clough, of Plas Clough in Denbighshire, was agent to Sir Thomas Gresham at Antwerp in the 16th century. His descendants continued to live at Plas Clough. A Hugh Clough, born in 1746, was a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, a friend of Cowper and Hayley, and a writer of poetry. The brother of this Hugh, Roger of Bathafern Park, Denbighshire, was the father of James Butler Clough. James Butler Clough was the first of his family to leave the neighbourhood. He settled as a cotton merchant at Liverpool, and had 4 children.[2]

Arthur Hugh Clough was the 2nd son of James Butler Clough, by Anne, daughter of John Perfect, a banker at Pontefract. The father was of a lively, sociable, and sanguine temperament, and strongly attached to his children.; his wife was of simple, lofty, and retiring character, and during her husband's absences made a special companion of her son Arthur.[2]

In the winter of 1822`3 the family emigrated to Charleston, South Carolina. In June 1828 the Cloughs sailed for England, returning to Charleston in October. Arthur and his elder brother Charles were sent to a school at Chester in November, and to Rugby in the summer of 1829. Arnold had then been head-master for a year.[2]

Clough spent his holidays with relations, except in the summer of 1831, when his parents visited England, and his recollections of the time are turned to account in Mari Magno. The long separation from his family made him prematurely self-reliant and thoughtful. He distinguished himself at school work, winning a scholarship open to the whole school at the age of 14; he contributed to, and for some time edited, a school magazine; and was excellent at football, swimming, and running. He became a favourite with Arnold, whose system had a powerful influence in stimulating his moral and mental development.[2]

In July 1836 his family returned to settle at Liverpool. In the following November Arthur gained the Balliol scholarship, and in October 1837 went into residence at Balliol College, Oxford. He became known to his most distinguished contemporaries, especially to W.G. Ward, to B. Jowett, Dean Stanley, Professor Shairp, Bishop Temple, and Dr. Arnold's 2 eldest sons, Matthew and Thomas.[2]

The influence of Newman was stirring all thoughtful minds at Oxford, and Clough, whose intellect had been aroused and perhaps overstrained at Rugby, took the keenest interest in the theological controversies of the time. The result in his case was a gradual abandonment of his early creed. He never became bitter against the church of his childhood, but he came to regard its dogmas as imperfect and untenable.[2]

His lofty principle, unworldliness, and intellectual power won general respect, and his friends were astonished when he only obtained a second class in 1841. In the following spring, however, he was elected to a fellowship at Oriel, then the greatest distinction obtainable at Oxford. In 1843 he was appointed tutor, and continued to reside in college, taking groups of undergraduates ("reading parties") to the Lake District and Scottish Highlands in the long summer vacations, one of which suggested the Bothie.[2]

Career[]

Family troubles were coming upon him. His younger brother had died of fever at Charleston at the end of 1842,[2] and his father never recovered the blow, dying a few months later. The business was not prosperous, and Clough undertook financial responsibilities for his mother and sister that pressed upon him. Meanwhile, his religious scruples developed, while the famine in Ireland and the political difficulties of the time increased his dissatisfaction with the established order of things.[3]

He resigned his tutorship in 1848, and his fellowship in October of the same year. In September he wrote the 'Bothie,' published at Oxford soon afterwards. His sympathies were strongly aroused by the revolutionary movements of the year. He was at Paris with Emerson in May 1848, and in the next winter went to Rome, where he stayed during the siege by the French in June 1849. Here he wrote Amours de Voyage. His last long poem, the Dipsychus, was written on a trip to Venice in 1850.[3]

The headship of University Hall, London, had been offered to him in the winter of 1848, and he entered upon his duties in October 1849. He seems to have found his life in London uncongenial, though he gained some valuable friends, especially Carlyle. Carlyle, as Froude says (Carlyle in London, i. 468), had been strongly attracted by Clough, and regarded him as "a diamond sifted out of the general rubbish-heap."[3]

Clough led a secluded life, and was still hampered by his pecuniary liability. After 2 years at University Hall, he had to give up the appointment, and finally resolved to try America. He sailed to Boston in October 1852 in the same ship with Thackeray and Lowell. Emerson, whom he had first met in England in 1847, welcomed and introduced him. He formed a warm friendship with C.E. Norton, to whom many of his letters are addressed, and with many other Americans.[3]

He took pupils, wrote articles, and began to revise Dryden's translation of Plutarch's Lives. His friends meanwhile obtained for him an appointment to an examinership in the education office.[3]

He returned to England in July 1853, and in June 1854 was married to Blanche, eldest daughter of Samuel Smith of Combe House, Surrey. From this time he was fully occupied with official work of various kinds. His domestic happiness gave him peace of mind, and he took a lively interest in helping the work of his relation, Florence Nightingale.[3]

Last years[]

After 1859 his health began to break. His mother died of paralysis in 1860. In 1861 change of scene was ordered. He went to Greece and Constantinople, and in July visited the Pyrenees, where he met his friends the Tennysons, and afterwards travelled to Italy. He was attacked by a malarial fever, and, after it had left him, died, like his mother, of paralysis, on 13 November 1861, at Florence. He was buried in the protestant cemetery at that place. He left a widow and 3 children.

Clough's lovable nature attracted all who knew him as it attracted Carlyle. Circumstances compelled change of occupation; he was diffident, and his intellect was wanting in quickness and audacity.

Writing[]

Clough failed to carry out any large design, and his poetry is deficient in form and polish; yet it has a greater charm for congenial minds than much poetry of superior refinement and more exquisite workmanship. It reveals, without self-consciousness, a character of marked sweetness, humour, and lofty moral feeling.

Though Clough was in part a disciple of Wordsworth, he shows the originality of true genius in his descriptions of scenery, and in his treatment of the great social and philosophical problems of his time. If several contemporaries showed greater artistic skill, no one gave greater indications of the power of clothing serious contemplation in the language of poetry.[3]

Clough's output is small and much of it appeared posthumously. Anthony Kenny notes that the editions prepared by Clough's wife, Blanche, have "been criticized ... for omitting, in the interests of propriety, significant passages in Dipsychus and other poems." But editing Clough's literary remains has proven a challenging task even for later editors. Kenny goes on to state that "it was no mean feat to have placed almost all of Clough's poetry in the public domain within a decade, and to have secured for it general critical and popular acclaim."[4]

His works are: 1. 'The Bothie of Toperna-Fuosich (afterwards Tober-na-Vuolich), a Long Vacation Pastoral,' 1848. 2. 'Ambarvalia; Poems by Thomas Burbidge and A.H. Clough,' 1849. 3. 'Plutarch's Lives; the translation called Dryden's corrected from the Greek and revised,' Boston, 1859 and 1864; London, 1876. 4. 'Greek History in a series of Lives from Plutarch' (selected from the last), 1860. 5. 'Poems, with Memoir (by F. T. Palgrave), 1862. 6. ' Poems and Prose Remains, with a selection from his Letters and a Memoir.' Edited by his wife, 2 volumes. 1869.[3]

Critical introduction[]

by Thomas Humphry Ward

"We have a foreboding,’ says James Russell Lowell in one of his essays, "that Clough, imperfect as he was in many respects, and dying before he had subdued his sensitive temperament to the sterner requirements of his art, will be thought a hundred years hence to have been the truest expression in verse of the moral and intellectual tendencies, the doubt and struggle towards settled convictions, of the period in which he lived." If doubt and struggle were the ruling tendencies of Clough’s time, this lofty estimate may well be true; for in no writer of that day are they more vividly reflected. They are the very substance of his verse, they give it strength, they impose upon it the limitations from which it suffers.

Clough has never been a popular poet, and it may be doubted if he ever will be. His poetry has too much of the element of conflict, too much uncertainty, ever to become what the best of it ought to become, a household word. But from beginning to end it exhibits that devotion to truth which was in a special degree the characteristic of the finer minds of his epoch; a devotion which in his case was fostered by his early training under Arnold at Rugby, and by the atmosphere of theological controversy in which he found himself at Oxford. The warmth of his feelings, the width of his sympathies, the fineness of his physical sensibilities, made him a poet rather than a writer of prose treatises; but the other element, that element of impassioned search for reality, gives his poems their distinctive quality — namely, an air of strenuous mental effort which is almost greater than verse can bear.

"Clough was a philosophic poet in a sense in which no man since Lucretius has been so."[5] This judgment, the judgment of a very competent critic, is at first unpalatable; one is not used to this matching of the men of our own time, and the men who are not among the most famous, with the giants of antiquity. The comparison however is no mere phrase.

These two men were philosophers, not from the desire of fame, not from the pleasure of intellectual discovery, not because they hoped that philosophy would suggest thoughts that would soothe some private grief of their own, but because it was to them an overpowering interest to have some key to the universe, because all even of their desires were suspected by them until they could find some central desire on which to link the rest; and love and beauty, and the animation of life, were no pleasure to them, except as testifying to that something beyond of which they were in search.

The unlikeness between the two poets is far more apparent than the likeness; for Lucretius has found his solution of the puzzle of existence, and Clough has not; the ancient poet believes that he has reached the point at which all contradictions are harmonised, the modern poet is sure that he has done nothing of the kind. But in this they are one, that both are philosophic, are "lovers of the knowledge which reveals to them real existence," are content with nothing less.

A reader of Clough’s poetry, marked as so much of it is by indecision and manifoldness of view, is startled when he comes upon such passages as these from his American letters —

‘I think I must have been getting into a little mysticism lately. It won’t do: twice two are four, all the world over, and there’s no harm in its being so; ’tisn’t the devil’s doing that it is; il faut s’y soumettre, and all right.'

And again —

‘What I mean by mysticism, is letting feelings run on without thinking of the reality of their object, letting them out merely like water. The plain rule in all matters is, not to think what you are thinking about the question, but to look straight out at the things and let them affect you; otherwise how can you judge at all? look at them at any rate, and judge while looking.’

This is not the most obvious feature of Clough’s mind, but it is the most real; and it explains much in his work that is otherwise difficult to account for. It explains, for example, the scantiness of his production; as Mrs. Clough says in her memoir of him, "his absolute sincerity of thought, his intense feeling of reality, rendered it impossible for him to produce anything superficial." When taken together with his sense of the infinite complexity of human life, it explains the play of conflicting thoughts and feelings which is the very essence of Dipsychus, and gives The Bothie its truth and charm. These poems, however, present the struggle between opposing views so strongly, that it is only when looked at from close by that we detect the positive element in them.

It is otherwise with those short lyrics, than which nothing can be more perfect in form or stronger and surer in matter, those lyrics "Say not the struggle nought availeth," and "As ships becalmed at eve," and "O stream descending to the sea," — they have the note of certainty without which the poet, whatever else he may have, can have no message for mankind.

There will always be a great charm, especially for Oxford men, in the "Long Vacation pastoral" The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich. Humour, pathos, clear character-drawing, real delight in nature and a power of rendering her beauties, above all a sense of life, of "the joy of eventful living" — it has all these, and over the whole is thrown, through the associations of the hexameter, a half-burlesque veil of academic illusion that produces the happiest effect.

Yet throughout there runs a current of controversy with the world; the hero "Philip Hewson, the poet; Hewson, a radical hot," an idealist who ends by marrying a peasant girl and emigrating with her to New Zealand — this Philip is a type that is always present to Clough’s mind, as much in Dipsychus and Amours de Voyage as in The Bothie. Idealism triumphs in him, indeed, whereas in Dipsychus it is finally defeated by the world-spirit, and in "Claude" it is checked and baffled by the sheer Hamlet-like weakness of the man. But the likeness which the three bear to one another is too strong to be accidental; it springs from the unity of the poet’s thought. Clough was in the true sense of the term a sceptic; and his three heroes, whatever the difference of their destinies, are alike sceptics too.

Clough holds a high and permanent place among our poets, not only because, as Mr. Lowell says, he represents an epoch of thought, but because he represents it in a manner so rare, so individual. He is neither singer nor prophet; but he is a poet in virtue of the depth and sincerity with which he felt certain great emotions, and the absolute veracity with which he expressed them. "His mind seems habitually to have been swayed by large, slow, deep-sea currents," says one of the best of his critics[6] — currents partly general in their operation on his time, partly special to himself; and his utterances when so swayed are intensely real. But he never was driven by them into a want of sympathy with other natures; and it was this extraordinary union of sincerity and sympathy, of depth and breadth, that so endeared him to his friends, and that make it difficult even now for the critic of his poetry not to be moved by the "personal estimate."

We find in his poems all sorts of drawbacks; we find a prevailing indecision that injures their moral effect in most cases; we find fragmentariness, inequality, looseness of construction, occasional difficulty of rhythm. Yet what of this? one is tempted to ask. In the presence of that sincerity, that delight in all that is best in the physical and moral world, that humour at once bold and delicate, that moral ardour, often baffled, never extinguished, we feel that the deductions of criticism are unwelcome: we are more than content to take Thyrsis as we find him, though

  ‘the music of his rustic flute
Kept not for long its happy country tone;
  Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,
  Which tasked his pipe too sore, and tired his throat.’[7]

Quotations[]

Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
         ("The Last Decalogue")

Recognition[]

Clough is commemorated in the monody, "Thyrsis," by Matthew Arnold, who also speaks warmly of his powers in his "Last Words on Translating Homer." [3]

Clough's poem "Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.[8]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

Non-fiction[]

  • Prose Remains (edited by Blanche Clough). London: Macmillan, 1888.
  • Selected Prose Works (edited by Buckner B. Trawick). University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1964.

Collected editions[]

  • The Poem and Prose Remains; with a selection of his letters, and a memoir (edited by Mrs. A.H. Clough). London: Macmillan, 1869.

Translated[]

Letters and journals[]

  • Letters and Remains (with a longer memoir). London: Spottiswoode, 1865.
  • Letters of Matthew Arnold to Arthur Hugh Clough (edited by Howard Foster Lowry). Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 1932.
  • Emerson-Clough Letters (edited by Howard F. Lowry & Ralph Leslie Rusk). Cleveland: Rowfant Club, 1934. Reprinted Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968.
  • The Correspondence of Arthur Hugh Clough (edited by Frederick Mulhauser). (2 volumes), Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1957.
  • New Zealand Letters of Thomas Arnold the Younger with ... letters of Arthur Hugh Clough (edited by James Bertram). Wellington, NZ, and London: Auckland University Press, Oxford University Press, 1966.
  • The Oxford Diaries (edited by Anthony Kenny). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press / New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[11]

See also[]

Say_Not_The_Struggle_Naught_Availeth_a_poem_written_by_Arthur_Hugh_Clough

Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth a poem written by Arthur Hugh Clough

The_Latest_Decalogue_by_Arthur_Hugh_Clough

The Latest Decalogue by Arthur Hugh Clough

References[]

  •  Stephen, Leslie (1887) "Clough, Arthur Hugh" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 11 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 127-129  Wikisource, Web, Dec. 26, 2017.
  • Samuel Waddington, Arthur Hugh Clough: A Monograph (1883).
  • Isobel Armstrong. Arthur Hugh Clough. London UK: British Council, 1962.
  • Walter E. Houghton. The Poetry of Clough: An Essay in Revaluation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963.
  • Richard M. Gollin, W.E. Houghton, and M. Timko, Arthur Hugh Clough: A Descriptive Catalogue [bibliographical listing]. New York: New York Public Library, 1968.
  • The Critical Heritage (edited by Michael Thorpe). London: Routledge, 1972.
  • Robindra Kumar Biswas, Arthur Hugh Clough: Towards a reconsideration. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.
  • Patrick Scott. The Early Editions of Arthur Hugh Clough [bibliographical study]. New York: Garland, 1977.
  • Rupert Christiansen. The Voice of Victorian Sex: Arthur Hugh Clough. London: Short Books, 2001.
  • Anthony Kenny, Arthur Hugh Clough: A poet's life, 2005. Print.
  • John Schad. Arthur Hugh Clough. Tavistock UK: Northcote House, 2006.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ John William Cousin, "Clough, Arthur Hugh," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature, 1910, 87. Web, Dec. 26, 2017.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 Stephen, 127.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Stephen, 128.
  4. ↑ Kenny, 2005, 86.
  5. ↑ Quarterly Review, April 1869.
  6. ↑ Westminster Review, October 1869.
  7. ↑ from Thomas Humphry Ward, "Critical Introduction: Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)," The English Poets: Selections with critical introductions (edited by Thomas Humphry Ward). New York & London: Macmillan, 1880-1918. Web, Feb. 2, 2017.
  8. ↑ "Say not the Struggle Naught Availeth," Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch). Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1919). Bartleby.com, Web, May 4, 2012.
  9. ↑ Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough (1888), Internet Archive. Web July 21, 2013.
  10. ↑ Plutarch's Lives: Clough's Translation (1890), Internet Archive. Web, July 21, 2013.
  11. ↑ Search results = au:Arthur Hugh Clough, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 17, 2016.

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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Clough, Arthur Hugh in the Dictionary of National Biography

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